China

China’s Airline Pilots Association has issued a wacky letter that is recommending its members to stay away from prostitutes, gambling and drink ahead of this year’s Lunar New Year holiday. The open letter which was published on an aviation website goes on to state that it expects all chinese pilots to keep up the safe image of its pilots who have flown 8.46 million hours last year on over 3.6 million flights with quite low accidental rate. It is interesting that an airline pilots association has to issue such a letter to rein in some of the bad apples who are bringing a bad name to the community. The association also careful to note that not all its members are involved in such activities and…

Emirates has been expanding at break neck speed in every possible nook and corner of the world. With vast amounts of easy funding available, the airline is definitely not short on cash but sometimes it’s those small policy quirks that can cause some issues. Lately Emirates has been pushing its staff to wear flag pins based on the nationalities stated in their passports. This seems to be a move to highlight the internationalization within the airline which can be seen as a great public relations move but they forget that it can equally be a touchy subject also for many people. Case in point here is the Hong Kong based staff of the airline who were mandated to wear China flag pins but were later…

China’s prized high-speed trains are having an unintended effect on the airline industry. Given the recent drop in profits of the domestic airlines it is clearly visible that the high-speed trains are robbing the airlines of potential customer base growth. With long delays becoming a norm for both international and domestic travel at the Chinese airports due to restrictive airspace access which is majorly controlled by the defense establishment, the high-speed trains have proven to be a big hit given the near perfect timings and high passenger capacity per train with lower travelling costs and comparable travel times. With a strong push from the top echelons of governance, the fast train network has rapidly grown from 0 to nearly 10,000 km in less than five…